FERNANDO TORRES comes up against his first football love this afternoon in an emotional reunion. DEBBIE SMAJE looks into ‘El Nino’s’ life with the team known as ‘Los colchoneros’ (the mattress makers)

FERNANDO TORRES first set foot in the Vicente Calderon as a nine-year-old.

Alongside his family, he visited Atletico Madrid’s trophy room, and began a lifelong love affair with his home-town club. Torres has grown up loving football, but it was his grandfather Eulalio who nurtured his adoration for Atletico, never tiring of telling him just what it meant to be a part of the club.

After signing his first professional contract in 1999, injury prevented from making his senior debut until May 2001 at 17.

A decade after that first visit to the Calderon, the young Torres had finally made it onto the pitch.

If there was anything that devoted Torres to his fans more than his goals, it was his attitude. In his own words, he recognised that it was not long ago that he himself had been just a fan, hanging around outside the training ground trying to get autographs from his idols.

It was that down to earth respect and mutual affection for the fans who adored him that made Torres the club’s inspirational icon. Carrying the hopes of the club and the fans almost single handedly, it was no real surprise that he was made captain of the club aged just 19.

His first senior call up to the Spain squad came in 2003 and Torres ended the 2003-04 season with 19 goals.

When the time finally came for Torres to leave his boyhood club, Atletico once again missing out on Europe, all accepted Liverpool was the right move for him.

The Atletico fans did not begrudge him his move and accepted that their hero was finally going to a club whose stature matched his talents and could fulfil his ambitions the way Atletico never could.

The move rejuvenated Torres and he became the hero of a nation when he scored the winning goal in the final of Euro 2008 against Germany, to deliver Spain’s first international trophy at senior level since 1964.

Injury unfortunately robbed him of the two meetings between Liverpool and Atletico in last season’s Champions League.

While today’s game is not the return to the Calderon he dreamed of, it will at least be a chance for him to be reunited with the club and the fans that are in his blood.